Ripped From Today’s Headlines, Pt . 5

Ripped From The Headlines is now complete. Now that the first quarter rush is upon us, those would-have-been-holiday titles are wailing and beating on the window to be let in. We shall indulge them.

A good portion of my self-identity is tied up in the fact that I play games, particularly games on personal computers, which I recognize is somewhat strange but I’m hoping that this is the sort of audience which will readily accept such declarations. I can usually survive a family gathering outside of the healing radius projected by my machine (designation “Featureless”), but seated where I am now, hands directly on it, the bonuses to INT and CON are incalculable.

I could go on like this for a very long time but the truth is that something happened to my machine and the experience has been utterly paralytic. At random intervals - in any piece of software, at the desktop, wherever - blasts of sharp static fire from the headphones into my mind. This hellborne sound has a number of odd characteristics, the most noteworthy being that it is literally nauseating to hear it. I believe that there are police crowd control devices which produce a similar effect, though I would imagine that they are usually not worn directly on the head.

I can imagine an experiment by which one would break a person of their lifelong affection for computers, and it would be exactly like this in every way. I’ve been up most of the night trying to square this thing away, because we’re talking about Domination, Freedom Force, and Republic Commando all basically this week. If you’ve got any ideas, and I hope that you do, please drop me a line at this dummy gmail account. My DxDiag dump is right here, if you’re curious. I feel like the static is a physical thing by this point, an organism, waiting and then leaping.